Account folder moved to "Administrator.000"?

Question

Before the Anniversary Update (which I only installed recently), Win 10 Pro 64 had one main account (mine) :

• Its name was Administrator (it was the built-in admin account)
• Its full name was different (lets say it was "Full_Name")
• This account had (obviously) Admin rights
• Its Win 10 User folder was "C:\Users\Administrator"

And I was very happy with this.

Since applying the Anniversary update a few days ago, Win 10 has changed my User folder to "C:\Users\Administrator.000" and created a new/different "C:\Users\Administrator". I didn't noticed anything special at first since everything appeared fine (desktop icons etc appeared like normal, everything had been silently moved and set up). Privileges are still fine, etc.

But browsing through the Users folder I noticed this change. It's not a big deal in and of itself but for the sake of cleanliness I would like to return the situation to normal, ie :

• have my user account be the built-in Admin account again ; and thus also...
• having my User folder be "C:\Users\Administrator" once again (with everything moved back and correctly detected/set in there) and not have this "Administrator.000" be my user account folder anymore

How can I proceed ?

Answer 1

I had this problem as well. For me, in my original C:\Users\Username folder one folder remaining in it, Index. When opening this folder in Explorer I was presented with the well-known dialog asking me to grant permission to this folder. I reverted to the previous Windows 10 version, 1709, and then I moved the search index to a different directory, removing C:\Users\Username\Index. I tried the update to 1803 again and now my user directory was not renamed to C:\Users\Username.000.

I suggest that you check if the deepest subfolders of the folders that remain in your original user folder are accessible. If not, you may have the same problem that I had. Revert to the previous version, fix the access problems, and try the update again.

When reverting to a previous Windows version, I advise you to make a USB recovery drive because for me reverting lead to a broken Windows installation once.

Answer 2

This typically happens when the old profile path is inaccessible. There are a number of reasons for this such as changing the computer's SID or even the old profile not being properly unloaded or wrong ownership or DACLs. This has been the case since at least Windows NT 4, btw.

With the registry editor of your choice go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList\$SID, where $SID is the placeholder for the SID of the account which shows the behavior you describe. You can see which SID corresponds to your account by asking wmic useraccount get name,sid. Typically the one ending in -500 is the built-in (local) admin account and -1000 the first created user account. These numbers (500 and 1000 respectively) are called RIDs (relative IDs).

Inside said registry key locate the value for ProfileImagePath and adjust as needed.

Please note that if the profile still exists under the old path (without .000) and is still inaccessible (say due to ownership or DACLs) you may run into a situation where WinLogon will simply create another new profile (presumably with .001 suffix). Although I have not seen it on modern Windows versions, there's a chance you may lock yourself out by tampering with the ProfileImagePath value, so I suggest you keep a secondary account active and available (e.g. the built-in admin account).

As mentioned, this should be the same procedure for anything from NT 4 onward. However, possible that Microsoft introduced new rules for these Microsoft (online) accounts which you can use. Also the SIDs look different when dealing with domain accounts.

NB: I posted this exact same answer over here.